Week 74

Hey Everyone!

Sorry it's been a while! Here is an update for the last 3-4 weeks.
        
I'm in Pittsford, which is pretty much as nice of a town as it gets
in Western New York. It's like Western NY's very own Yorba Linda. 
I came in right as they dropped a couple investigators, and
we essentially don't have any investigators right now. So for the past
month we have been trying to find some, but we have not had much
success. We really don't have much of an option to find new
investigators except from tracting. We're trying to think of other
ways to meet people. We've gone around to all the churches in the area
to ask about any service opportunities they have, but none of them
have anything right now because it's February. We went to our first Mass
the other day! That was fun. There was a guy we tracted into a couple
weeks ago that recognized us (I guess that's not hard) and came up to
talk to us for little bit afterwards. As far as working with less
actives, we only have one that actually will let us come in and teach
him.


That's pretty much the story of the last month. It has snowed like the Dickens. 
It's not like there's been a 4 foot blizzard, but it just won't stop, and it's been 
cold as heck. Church was canceled a couple weeks ago because of how cold 
it was. There are New York building policies about possible fire hazards if 
the water is frozen. That was the same day that we had to stay in
because of the windchill.
        
OK, so here's a couple random things that have happened though. So back
in Geneseo, we had an investigator that was one of my favorite people
I've met on my mission. His name is Dan, and he was easily the kindest
person I have ever met in my life, and also the funniest. He was a
Pastor for his local church which was really small in numbers, but
before he moved to New York he was apparently the pastor of a
mega-church in Detroit with 1000 people or so. Anyway, he had a lot of
health problems, specifically with his liver, and when we were
teaching him he had 5-10 years to live. He was always going in and out
of the hospital, but a couple weeks ago things took a turn for the
worst and he was given a few days to two weeks to live because his
kidneys couldn't take the treatment they were doing for his liver
anymore. The hospital he was staying at happened to be 15 minutes from
our apartment in Pittsford. A week and half ago we went to visit
him. It was really good to see him again, and he was completely at
peace with what was going to happen. He was mostly worried about his
two daughters that are both still in high school. (his wife had
passed away a few years ago.) They have been taken in by a super
awesome family that was in our ward. I think the day we went to
visit him was a Thursday, he was taken home for hospice care on
Friday, and then Monday he passed away. I was really grateful to
have seen him that last time.

On Tuesday we have not one but TWO members of the Seventy
coming for a special ipad meeting. Apparently they are making
A LOT of changes dealing with ipads and internet proselyting, and we
have a four hour meeting on Tuesday with them to go over them. We will
all be getting new ipads because they are pretty much re-launching
ipads and internet proselyting in general. Internet Proselyting has
been going on for 5 years in this mission (I guess we were the first
mission to be on Facebook), but those 5 years were mostly an
experiment, so now they have finally narrowed down a system for the
best way of doing things, and there will be some big changes. It's
pretty exciting. Part of the re-launch might involve us not internet
proselyting for a month or two though. I think it is pretty much a big
cleansing process, because they are starting over and they want us to
take a break from the old way we were doing it, and then be ready to
start this new system they are introducing. It should be cool.


That's pretty much all the interesting stuff that is going in
my life right now.

Love Elder Holt